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This is the car I crashed. Bizarrely, I was completely uninjured in the crash. But the car was a write off. This is it sitting the back lot at Westbourne Motors (WM) in Fontwell. It seems that if you have an accident in West Sussex and you get the police to call a tow-truck, they call one from WM. Fontwell does not have a train station and is not well served by buses. This means that it is nigh on impossible to get to without a car. Which is a problem since most people never want to go there, except when they no longer have a car. This means that you have to leave your car sitting in their back lot for quite a while. Two weeks in my case. This means they can charge your insurance companies huge amounts of money for taking up that space.
This is the road where it happened. Alternatively, you can see a map view. The crash corner on the map is obscured by where they've written 'A284'. Which is good, because on most maps the corner looks like nothing more than a slight kink in the road. Certainly not the sort of thing that you should be losing the back on and rolling.
This photo shows that I was only seven miles from home when it happened. It also shows that this road is permanently damp. Which can't have helped.... I actually crashed about 100 metres further up the road. But the signpost in this picture should help you locate the road on the map. Then you will know to avoid it. Because it is a deathtrap of potentially lethal proportions.
Well, this is it. The bend. And even from this tiny picture you can clearly see what a terrible piece of road planning it is. The car in the photo is going the opposite way from the way I was going. But look at how much her car is leaning! Yes, that is a lady driver. And everyone knows that ladies drive more safely than men. So imagine the difficulty that men have in negotiating the bend. Well, you don't have to imagine, do you...... Also the tyre tracks and faded white line show that most people cut the corner. Instead of what I always do and try to be safe and stay on the correct side of the road. Well, I won't be making that mistake again.
This is where the Clio hit the bank immediately prior to rolling. If you look very closely, you can see the offside front foglamp lying just above the lefthand rut. And looking at the road markings, you can see that a blind bend is coming up. A cat's eye is also visible. Another thing that impaired my ability to stay on the road was that it was completely unlit.
Not off my car, but this just shows what a car-eater this stretch of road is. This is a section of exhaust pipe that was lying not far from the signpost further up the page.